introduction.
What strange times we live in. 2020 has been a wild ride, and though the start was fairly bleak, now the government and the country are trying their best to pretend like the covid thing never happened. And although the year thus far has sucked so much, on a personal level, I feel like 2020 was one my best years so far. It kind of feels selfish to be one of the only people content with their year, but it was the year where I've done some of my best work as a composer and musician, made new friends while simultaneously maintaining old ones, finally figured out my gender identity, got a girlfriend, and became generally more healthy both mentally and physically.
I've finally got back in touch with my prolific self that I was back in high school, and although I'm not writing the insane amount I was back then, my focus has changed from quantity to quality. The pieces that I wrote for ECUtorial and spatial music are pieces I'm extremely proud of, and are up to a quality my high school self would be proud of as well.
One thing about by music in 2020 that I didn't anticipate is the electronica. I did it a couple years ago, but I stopped after my Macbook broke. After picking it up again when I got a trial version of Ableton, I haven't really gotten off, and it's now my DAW of choice. One thing that I did have to do this year was to learn how to use Ableton, and how to make the best of the plugins I have, due to the lite version not supporting Max. I'm trying to learn REAPER as well, but I learnt Ableton due to not having a DAW at all, while I can theoretically learn REAPER, but Ableton is just right there...
I've also gotten into the experimental side, toying around with graphic and text scores. They were really fun, and I might do more in the future...
I've finally got back in touch with my prolific self that I was back in high school, and although I'm not writing the insane amount I was back then, my focus has changed from quantity to quality. The pieces that I wrote for ECUtorial and spatial music are pieces I'm extremely proud of, and are up to a quality my high school self would be proud of as well.
One thing about by music in 2020 that I didn't anticipate is the electronica. I did it a couple years ago, but I stopped after my Macbook broke. After picking it up again when I got a trial version of Ableton, I haven't really gotten off, and it's now my DAW of choice. One thing that I did have to do this year was to learn how to use Ableton, and how to make the best of the plugins I have, due to the lite version not supporting Max. I'm trying to learn REAPER as well, but I learnt Ableton due to not having a DAW at all, while I can theoretically learn REAPER, but Ableton is just right there...
I've also gotten into the experimental side, toying around with graphic and text scores. They were really fun, and I might do more in the future...
WARNING: even though there are some pieces that are performed by live musicians, or were written in DAWs, most pieces (especially those in materials) sound god awful due to bad Sibelius MIDI sounds. I really need to get a sample library, but until then, enter at your own risk.